The project, entitled Innocence of Muslims, portrays Islam as a dangerous religion and the Prophet Mohammed as power-hungry.

"The film may be wrong and offensive but it is actually laughable as a piece of film making," Middle East envoy Tony Blair commented this morning.

Around 1,000 protesters gathered near US and Nato installations in Kabul, Afghanistan, today, in what is expected to be the first of a series of protests across the world throughout the week.

Associated Press news agency reported chants of "death to America" and "death to those people who have made a film and insulted our Prophet".

It comes after Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah demanded more demonstrations over the little-seen video, which he said was a worse insult to Islam than Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses or the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper in 2005.